Traditionally, gaming systems with a dedicated console were standalone machines that accommodated a limited number of players (e.g., 4). PC-based gaming grew in popularity in part due to the ability to play games online with many remote players over a network (e.g., the Internet). Thus, one trend for dedicated gaming systems is to provide broadband capabilities to facilitate online gaming.
Creating an online gaming architecture for dedicated consoles poses several unique and difficult problems. One problem is that there are a number of hackers that constantly attempt to cheat during online games to gain various gaming advantages. To defeat this cheating, various security schemes are deployed to protect the data being transmitted over the network from hacker observation and/or modification. Such schemes, however, require the game console to authenticate itself with a remote entity (e.g., online gaming server, registration server, other player system, etc.). Valid credentials are used during authentication to guarantee authenticity of network traffic during gaming. If these credentials could be easily obtained during registration, a hacker could easily manipulate the credentials and forge all network packets from the video game console using another computer. From the game server's perspective, the gaming packets appear to be authentic since they came from a network source that was capable of providing the required credentials.
Accordingly, to secure online gaming and other services, there is a need to prevent hackers from easily obtaining valid credentials for purposes of cheating or other improper uses.